Word Weave

A four-letter word across and a four-letter word down, crossing at a single square that belongs to both. Some squares are already printed; the rest are blank, and eight letters are laid out below the lattice. Weave the blanks so that both words are real. Every letter you press in is checked against the whole word list, so any real pair wins — not just the one the puzzle was built from — and a letter that could never finish a word costs you one of your tries.

It runs entirely on your device: 0 network requests, works offline. No ads, no account, nothing to buy, and no betting, money or prizes of any kind.

1. Read the lattice. Squares marked set are printed and cannot change. Squares showing a dot are yours to fill. The dashed square is the shared one — it is the letter both words read through, and it is always blank.
2. Focus the board — click it, or press Tab until it is outlined.
3. Move with the arrow keys or WASD. The bottom row is the tray of offered letters; press Down from the lattice to reach it and Up to come back. The cursor clamps at the edges rather than wrapping.
4. Take a letter with Enter or Space while the cursor is on a tray tile. It is marked ▲ held.
5. Press it into a square. Move to an empty square and press Enter again. If some pair of real words can still be finished with that letter there, it sticks and gets a ✓. If nothing can, you are told so and it costs one try.
6. Read the digits. Under each empty square is how many of the offered letters still fit it. Under each tray letter is how many squares it still fits. A square showing 1 is forced — do that one first.
7. Jump to the next square still to fill with F, instead of walking the cursor there.
8. Changed your mind? Press Esc or Backspace to put the held letter down, or press a filled square to take that letter back into the tray. Both are free — only a refused letter costs a try.
9. Fill every square before the tries run out.

How do you solve a crossword square where two words cross?

Work the most constrained square first, not the one you happen to be looking at. A shared square has to satisfy two words at once, so it usually has the fewest letters that can go in it — often exactly one — and pinning it down collapses the choices everywhere else. The general move is: for each empty square, count how many of the letters you have left could legally go there; fill the square with the smallest count; then re-count, because that one placement has just shrunk the options for its neighbours. Constraint solvers call it the minimum-remaining-values heuristic, and it is the single biggest improvement most people can make to how they fill in a crossword. This game prints that count under every empty square so you can practise reading it rather than guessing at it.

Is the puzzle always solvable?

Yes, and that is guaranteed by how it is built rather than checked afterwards. Two real words that share a letter are chosen first, from this site's own list of 1292 common four-letter words. Only then are four squares blanked and their letters dropped into the tray along with four spares. So the pair the lattice was built from is always still buildable out of the letters you are given. On top of that, a letter is only accepted when a completion survives it, so the lattice can never be walked into a dead end — a full board is necessarily two real words.

What does the "Ways" number mean?

It is how many different valid completions the lattice still admits: pairs of real words that fit the printed letters, agree on the shared square, and can be paid for out of the letters left in the tray. It is computed by an exhaustive search over the word list, not estimated. It starts somewhere between one and six, and it falls as you place letters. It is also where your try budget comes from — a lattice with one way through is much harder than one with six, so the tight ones grant up to five wrong letters and the loose ones only two.

What happens if I find a different pair of words than the one it made?

You win. That is deliberate, and it is the main thing this differs from a paper fill-in on. A puzzle that checks your letters against one stored answer will mark a genuinely correct alternative wrong, which teaches you to guess what the setter was thinking instead of what the words allow. Here every placement is checked against the whole word list, so if you weave two real words that use the letters you were given, the round is won and the result card shows the pair you actually made.

Is there any money, betting or in-app purchase in this?

None, and there never will be. No currency, no prizes, nothing to buy, no lives to refill and no wager of any kind. It is a word puzzle.

Can I play it with a keyboard or a screen reader?

Both, with the same rules — there is no drag, no swipe and no timing anywhere in it. Arrows move, Enter takes and places, F jumps to the next unfilled square, Esc puts a letter down. Every square and every tray tile is a real button with a spoken label saying which word it belongs to, whether it is printed, held or played, and how many letters still fit it. The live region reads out the squares left, the completions left and the tries left after every move. Printed squares say set, filled squares carry a ✓ and a held letter says ▲ held, so nothing on the board depends on telling colours apart.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Once the page has loaded once, the whole game is on your device — the word list, the generator, the solver that referees every letter, and the scoring. Nothing is fetched while you play, and there is no server involved at any point.

Two words, four letters each, drawn from this site's list of 1292 common English four-letter words — so an obscure word you know may not be on it. Exactly four squares are blank every time: the shared one, at least one more in each word, and one extra. The tray holds eight letters: the four the lattice needs plus four spares drawn from the same two words. The try budget runs from two to five depending on how many completions the lattice admits. There is no timer, no daily streak to protect and no hint button — the digits under the squares are the hint, and they are always on.

Word Hunt is the other word game here that rewards reading over recall: six words hidden in a letter grid, claimed by naming their two ends. Letter Chain works the constraint the other way round — each word has to start where the last one ended. Word Ladder turns one word into another a single letter at a time, and Anagram Rush gives you the letters and asks what they can spell.

Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.